Still Perching

I had another short session on a farm pond today from 1130 to 1530hrs. I opted for a 2 rod approach, 1st rod with a ledgered worm and a pva bag with chopped worm/caster mix and the 2nd rod was to be  a float paternostered live bait.

Ledger rig with home made light ledger stem

As on previous sessions I used a short whip to try and catch some small perch for bait. It took around 30 minutes before I started getting bites on the whip line, after another 20 minutes or so I had 4 or 5 suitably sized baits in the keepnet. I lip hooked a small perch on the paternoster rod and continued fishing for baits in the margins.

Lip hooked bait on the paternoster rig

Bites were hard to come by on the livebait and worm rigs. I kept feeding maggots over the live bait to attract some small bait fish into the area which would hopefully attract the larger perch. Eventually I had a bite on the worm rig, which resulted in strike into thin air, a quick check of the bait showed the small fish were the most likely culprit. The float on the whip slid under and I lifted into to what  appeared to be a slightly better fish, however it turned out to be a foul hooked frog !

I eventually landed a couple of fish on the worm rod but these went no larger than 5 or 6 ounces, I ended the session with 11 perch, not what I was hoping for, these perch are proving to be harder to catch than I thought they would be. 

My homemade ledger stems seem to work well, they slow the fall of the lead through the water so they don't sink into the silt and help keep the line off the bottom. I will be using these whilst targeting eels in the coming months.

I am aiming to get back on the pond next week possibly using the long pole and a running ledger rod both with worms as live baits haven't fared well so far.